Tenured professor still not sure she'll return to campus

By Sarah Kuta, Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
01/02/2014 02:47:30 PM MST

Updated:
01/02/2014 09:29:15 PM MST

University of Colorado professor Patti Adler
(Courtesy photo)

The University of Colorado on Thursday cleared Patti Adler to teach her now-infamous course "Deviance in U.S. Society," though she's still undecided about whether she'll return to the campus later this month.

CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard said the five-person executive committee in the sociology department gave Adler the go-ahead to resume teaching the class.

"She is cleared to teach the course," Hilliard said. "The sociology department executive committee recommends, and the chair of the department agrees, that the course proceeds with the recommendations contained in the ad hoc committee's report."

A four-person committee within the sociology department reviewed the course and recommended Monday that Adler "be welcome to teach the course in spring 2014 and thereafter." Hilliard, however, said the review board's recommendation was not final until the executive committee approved it.

The long-running deviance course, which contains a lecture about prostitution presented as a skit performed by undergraduate teaching assistants, has been the subject of controversy among CU faculty members and administrators since early December.

That skit, Adler said, was investigated by the campus Office of Discrimination and Harassment, which she claimed found it to be a "risk" to the university. CU officials said they had concerns about students who may have felt coerced into participating and possibly being filmed without their consent.

The executive committee is made up of department chairwoman Joanne Belknap and professors Janet Jacobs, Hillary Potter, Stefanie Mollborn and Kathleen Tierney, who was also on the committee that reviewed Adler's course.

Not everyone on the executive committee approved the review committee's recommendation entirely, which said that skits are "meritorious pedagogical techniques." The panel's recommendation requested only that Adler document that all participants in the skit gave full, informed consent.

Potter wrote in an email to the executive committee that she "formally" objected to Adler's use of the skit because she received complaints from teaching assistants and undergraduate teaching assistants.

"I object to the use of this skit, which serves to perpetuate sexualized and racialized stereotypes about sex workers and places TAs in precarious positions," Potter wrote, though she broadly approved of Adler teaching the course.

Adler has retained Evergreen-based attorney Bill Finger, who specializes in civil rights and employment law, according to his firm's website. Adler told the Daily Camera this week that she is considering suing CU.

Finger confirmed that he had been hired by Adler, and that he has been in contact with the university through its legal department.

In a statement released Thursday evening, Adler said she is still weighing her options. Adler is mulling over a "retirement incentive" of two years' pay over five years starting retroactively Jan. 1. Hilliard said Adler's yearly salary is $122,926.

Adler said she had been told last month that if she decided to return to the campus to teach, she could be fired if one complaint is filed against her.

"Although it is gratifying that the executive committee in the sociology department has affirmed the ad hoc committee's decision to permit me to continue teaching a course that for 25 years has been held in high esteem with no reported complaints, the fact that it had to undergo this extraordinary scrutiny to reverse CU's initial jump to judgment is a sad statement on what is occurring in universities," Adler said.

"My case is just a small step in the fight to preserve academic freedom in universities around the globe. Many issues remain to be addressed in my ongoing relationship with the university, so my future is still unclear. I greatly appreciate the support I have received from students, faculty, and outside organizations."

Many national organizations and CU faculty members have argued that the university's questioning of the prostitution skit is a violation of Adler's academic freedom, which is defined by CU's Board of Regents law as "the freedom to inquire, discover, publish and teach truth as the faculty member sees it, subject to no control or authority save the control and authority of the rational methods by which truth is established."

In a letter to the CU community last month, Provost Russell Moore insinuated that Adler may have violated CU's sexual harassment policy.

On Thursday, the Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union issued a joint statement with the National Coalition Against Censorship expressing the groups' alarm at the university's treatment of Adler.

"The university's response to this situation, inappropriately raising the spectre of sexual harassment to attack and intimidate the professor, illustrates the need for vigilance in enforcing academic freedom, both to protect faculty and students' right to inquire and discuss sensitive topics, and to prevent demeaning or distorting the serious problem of real harassment and abuse," the statement said.

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